This is not my website. That would be www.lovelake.org. This was about art and artists, writings, interviews, audio, video etc. during a certain era of art blogging. Now it is just suspended in the occasional image.

Monday, April 30, 2012

A little comment on the above image, Target No. 32. It is the rare use of not a real woman - it's a painting by Wayne Thiebaud. Then she is stuffed into a Judd box, from the same article I plundered for the Judd Montages. So she is kind of a crossover between two bodies of work.

Friday, April 27, 2012

Tomorrow night is the highly anticipated CAP Auction, in which one organization brings in about half a million dollars towards their mission To prevent HIV infections, support and empower people affected and infected by HIV/AIDS, and eliminate HIV/AIDS stigma. Last year I was the Art Narrator of the live auction and I look forward to doing it again tomorrow night.

I've been away from Art Focus at KBOO for a few weeks. My return interview on May 1st will be Gigi Rosenberg, who has a new book out: The Artist's Guide to Grant Writing. I read this book cover to cover while I went through my submission ventures. It definitely helped.

Recent paintings by Sharon Butler investigate the objects of
everyday life while riffing on a casual, everyday practice of painting. In “Staples,”
Butler uses to
common staple as the formal image. Save of course, like any New Casualist, the
form is far from formal. It appears sketchy, in progress, perhaps undone. The
incompleteness asks us to look further at just what is actually there. In the
case of this painting, the canvas is loosely stapled to the stretcher bars. A
provisional presentation is celebrated, almost like nostalgia for more simple
times or a beginner vision. “Staples” mean more than one thing and act in more
than one way. The means and the material are all in a transition, no set
program or agenda in place, no direction home.

“The New Casualists” was actually the name of an important 2011
essay by Butler
for the Brooklyn Rail, in which
describes the trend of non-formalism in abstract American painting. While
Butler doesn’t toss her own work into the ring in the essay – her work isn’t
completely abstract anyway – and she’s also claimed right in her blog Two Coats ofPaint that she is far too much a hand-wringer to be called such - the
article indicated a wider net of theory and zeitgeist into which some of her
work belongs. She has certainly got “a studied, passive-aggressive
incompleteness” down.

Mind, the reproductions on her own website are often in-studio
shots, meant to reveal process and place as well as object. Everything appears
to be on an equal footing. As we move through Butler’s work in terms of images, in terms of
paint but also in terms of writing, we can see that the process and shift of
work is an ongoing verb rather than a noun. With her hands in so many different
mediums, wearing just about every hat you can wear in the art world, Butler’s own paintings
reveal a restlessness and breathlessness, disguised by a humility and
earthiness which is probably not telling the entire truth.

The paintings often feel like track marks, where wayward
stains and bleeds mesh with layered lines. Paint is mixed with graphite, as if
to tell us that drawing came first and will not go away. In this regard none of
the pieces feel like pure painting, whatever that is. There are watery bleeds
and washes matched by tentative pauses.

Allison Manch, who shares exhibition time with Butler at Season, uses
bleeds, stains and washes too. The stains become the background for her
illustrative embroidery. And while both Manch and Butler may have used a bigger, more varied
palette in the past, the newer work claims a more subtle color story, as if
color is beside the point.

Manch creates characters and storylines atypical of
embroidery, some fantastical, some nostalgic and some based in current cultural
climes. No doubt she is a forceful proponent of what the Museum of Contemporary
Craft in Portland, Oregon so ardently described in the title of their popular
and occasionally profound exhibition “New Embroidery: Not Your Grandma’s Doily”
in 2006. Like those artists, Manch embraces homespun mediums while addressing a
variety of more contemporary themes and images.

Her work is also not tied to a smaller scale so typical with
this medium. In “Gimme Shelter,” Manch presents a 50 square inch quilt with
ragged edges and bleeding, irregular edges in the text, same as the title. The
heroic urgency in the capitals is complemented by the washes and blurs. The
artist also repurposes found hankies which already have extensive embroidery.
She adds to them, creating a narrative where there once was just design and
pattern.

“Father,” a 12 inch square piece, details a more
hippie-than-hipster male holding a white dog. The bleeding color around him
becomes an oval, reminding us of a somewhat more traditional portrait. Then
there is “Smoker,” a tiny 7 inch square hanky with an embroidered man doing
just what the title says.

One of the best pieces has cacti and formal Xs in the four
corners, with a man behind a bush in the center. The artist states it might be
called “Stalker” but is actually as yet untitled. While embroidery asks for
many lines and dots from the maker, the pieces are fairly reductive and direct,
a fact driven home by the simplicity of her titles. In general too the pieces,
especially the figures and faces, seem very west coast, if not “Western”
altogether. In this respect the work can feel rugged and warm.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

When I showed the Targets in 2010, people who only knew me through painting wondered how my collages were connected to paint. My usual response was what does painting have to do with rock n roll? Pretty basic but kind of flip.

The fact is I spent a lot of my 20s absorbing the Russian Avant Garde and their relatives. I loved Malevich and El Lizzitsky and still do. It occurred to me today just how much The Judd Montages, my upcoming show at Frosch and Portmann, had all kinds of connections and similarities to what I like to paint and the art history I loved.

But all of the work, whether it is abstract painting or or photo-based collage, contrasts beauty and substance. My beautiful women are more than just that. And I take 'serious' objects and make them more than that.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Those of you in Seattle should check out the new show at Season, Squeeze Hard (Hold That Thought). This is a two person show - Sharon Butler (above) and Allison Manch (below). Many are not aware that Season produces a fab paper catalog for every show. I wrote the essay for this particular exhibition.

In New York I lived in an illegal sublet. I was supposed to stay three months but stayed ten years. The sublet had belonged to a well heeled art dealer and while not having many things, everything it had was good. One of those things was a slick art magazine from the 60s featuring Donald Judd. Judd never really meant all that much to me but the glossiness of the stark forms stayed with me. The dealer never came back for most of his things. I held on to the magazine for over 2 decades before I cut into it.

The work began as a gesture under a bit of duress, as I had just lost my hoarded stash bag full of potential collage images in a move. Feeling paralyzed, I decided to create an exercise that would feel easy. I also wanted to inject some juice into something more known for its austerity and non-content - and to play with something not really meant to be played with. This exercise turned out to be The Judd Montages. They came right before the Targets and I don’t think I could have made the Targets without them.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

The Judd Montages will be featured in my upcoming show at Frosch and Portmann. This gives me great satisfaction as they were never shown before but I think they are very instrumental to whatever I am collaging today. I'll post a statement later this week.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Seeing Generations: Betty Feves felt like a bit of a flashback. As a child of an active artist in the Pacific Northwest, I saw shapes and colors, methods and mediums, all related to this artist and this show. Curated by Namita Wiggers, this exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Craft features an artist whose influence in this part of the world was beyond measure. I am looking forward to having Namita on the radio with me this coming Tuesday, April 3rd.